"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses,
reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use..." -- Galileo Galilei, 1615

Saturday, July 07, 2012

Willard Romney -- Bush 43 redux

A while back I asked to hear from the Romney supporters among my friends on Facebook. The response was underwhelming, to say the least. Nobody, and I mean nobody, bothered to lay out a case for electing Willard. The few responses that I did get were just attacks on BHO -- their reasons to vote against BHO, but no explanation of why they plan to vote for Romney. Sadly, my Romney supporting friends continue to pass along the same falsehoods about BHO. One of the biggest is the claim that BHO blames all of our current problems on Bush 43.

The problems in the US go back a lot farther than Bush 43, although he certainly played a huge role in exacerbating them. We've been on the decline since Nixon. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class, the group that made the US great, is disappearing. BHO has done a lot of things I don't agree with, but I will say this. Since 2009, Osama bin Laden is dead, GM and Chrysler are still alive, the unemployment rate has come down, the occupation of Iraq is almost ended, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, and Sarah Palin is still a has-been ex-half-governor living in Alaska.

Romney is just Bush 43 without the stupid fake Texas accent and without the history of alcoholism and drug abuse. If Americans are stupid enough to elect Romney, then the financial crises and economic hard times we saw under Bush 43 will seem like a walk in the park. If Romney's proposals become law, the national debt will increase by at least $3 trillion. Taxes will go down even more on the ultra-rich and will go up on the poor. The safety nets established by FDR in the 1930s and LBJ in the 1960s will be eviscerated. It will be Great Depression II, and Americans will have brought it on themselves.

I don't hear BHO blaming Bush 43, but I do hear him blaming the obstructionist Republicans in Congress, and for good reason. They vote against their own proposals if BHO supports them. They have operated with a single goal, to make BHO look bad so that he won't be reelected. They don't give a rat's ass about the country they proclaim to love, or the people that are hurting because of the idiotic economic policies they advocate. They only care about two things, making sure that the ultra-wealthy oligarchs who call the shots get to amass as much power and money as possible. The rest of us, well we can just go fuck ourselves.